Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday August 17, 2012 @03:31PM
from the but-i-like-pie-in-the-sky dept.

Nancy_A writes "The U.S. astronomy budget is facing unprecedented cuts, including the potential closure of several facilities. A new report by the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences says available funding for ground-based astronomy could undershoot projected budgets by as much as 50%. The report recommends the closure – called 'divestment' in the new document — of iconic facilities such as the Very Long Baseline Array and the Green Bank Radio Telescope, as well as shutting down four different telescopes at the Kitt Peak Observatory by 2017."

...and has throughout our history — but it shouldn't be the only thing that drives space science and other human achievement.

If you're interested in a truly insightful and inspiring speech on this topic, I highly encourage you to set aside an hour for Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent talk on just this subject at the University of Wisconsin - Madison:

If you're interested in a truly insightful and inspiring speech on this topic, I highly encourage you to set aside an hour for Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent talk on just this subject at the University of Wisconsin - Madison:

You think we rode to the moon on civilian hardware? Those were repurposed ICBMs made to blow up cities. The SALT treaties put an end to them.

MOST of the cool stuff NASA did in the 60's was on military hardware or tests for the air force (using air force hardware).

You seem shocked as if this is a new thing. The same people who build the NASA hardware (what they do build) are the same ones who build the military hardware. NASA has always been getting other agencies leftovers... Pretty much the shuttle is

It's kind of silly to say that Saturn V "stemmed from the designs," given that they didn't use the same engines, the engines were of completely different thrust classes, they didn't even use the same propellants (Kerolox for the 1st stage and LH2/LOx for the 2nd and 3rd stages), and certainly the tankage and other structures used on the Saturn V weren't based on anything related to the V-2 and Jupiter rockets at least as far as I know. One could maybe make a case that the Saturn I/Ib was "Jupiter/Redstone d

The Saturn V was very much yet another military pissing contest project, specifically with the Russians and used the usual suspects, Boeing, North American Aviation (of P-51 fame) and Douglas Aircraft as contractors, and Nazi scientists providing the brains. All technologies developed were also very much developed by and intended for subsequent military application. The shuttle, inherited much of the Saturn V technology and was also NOT a NASA project, but another cabal of MIC contractors from the Saturn

the Saturn V technology and was also NOT a NASA project, but another cabal of MIC contractors from the Saturn V project as well as now a few others. NASA hasn't done any significant launch vehicles on their own.

If your opinion mattered what you said would be a huge slap in the face of the THOUSANDS of American engineers and scientists who worked on the space program.

Von Braun may have lead the effort, but it was done with the support of countless engineers and scientists, some that I know personally, that wanted nothing more than to fulfill Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon. They did it. For the most part these were men who launched their own rockets when they were boys, who hot rodded model A fords, who dreamed of exploring space. Sure some of the lead engineers were former Nazis but by then they were American citizens, immigrants like so many other Americ

The Saturn 5 used the F-1 engine which was initially developed for the Air Force. They halted that when they realized they didn't need an engine that big, but initial development was for military purposes. And of course it was developed by German scientists who headed the whole Saturn family, from experience they had from developing the V-2 rockets. So really, it was, at least indirectly, developed by the Nazis.

You think we rode to the moon on civilian hardware? Those were repurposed ICBMs made to blow up cities. The SALT treaties put an end to them.

Cool story bro. Too bad it's completely wrong.

The Saturn series rockets were designed by Von Braun's team to launch military satellites into low earth orbit. Every single one of them was launched from Cape Canaveral. The Saturn V was the largest of the Saturn series and was built for the purpose of launching astronauts into space. NASA never launched astronauts on rockets that were not designed to be human-rated.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) treaty (more specifically SALT I) agreement was made in May 1971 which is a little late for the Saturn V to repurposed since it flew from Nov 9, 1967 to Dec 6, 1972.

BTW, ICBM were originally mounted on Atlas rockets then were replaced by the Titan II rockets.

BTW, ICBM were originally mounted on Atlas rockets then were replaced by the Titan II rockets.

And those Atlas rockets [wikipedia.org] carried the first Americans into orbit. Slightly modified to be "man rated", of course, but it was based on the ICBM and was most certainly not designed from the ground up for manned missions. Of course NASA would never launch astronauts on non-man-rated rockets, that's the whole point of "man rated".

You are correct the Mercury missions used the Atlas LV-3B rockets. The LV-3B were derived from the Atlas SM-65D design (as noted in your wikipedia link). The mercury missions were orbital missions. The grand parent posts referred to Lunar mission which was the Apollo missions done on Saturn rockets. Both Mercury and Apollo missions were done prior to the Salt I treaty agreement.

Also I forgot to mention that the rockets used in our nuclear defense program are still being repurposed for non-manned science mi

You think we rode to the moon on civilian hardware? Those were repurposed ICBMs made to blow up cities. The SALT treaties put an end to them.

MOST of the cool stuff NASA did in the 60's was on military hardware or tests for the air force (using air force hardware).

Nobody's going to dispute that the military has produced some major technological breakthroughs. A lot of the early efforts in computing were military cryptographic efforts, the military played a critical role in developing navigational technologies like radar and later GPS, and of course, DARPA brought us the internet.

But there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, I'd argue it's pretty hard *not* to have one or two major technological breakthroughs when you're spending $700 billion per year

Well, that's half true. The Air Force was forced to use the shuttle because NASA lied to Congress about, well, pretty much every aspect of its performance. The USAF wanted nothing to do with it, but NASA was able to hijack a large piece of their space budget by pretending the shuttle could handle military missions. Finally the Air Force gave up and said "Fine. We can use it if it will do this...," desperately hoping Congress would change its mind and allow them to go back to cheaper and more reliable di

Blame it on insane over funding on the military basically spending money hand over fist to smash it, burn it, blow it up and throw any remains away. Military spending beyond the bare necessitates is a total obscene waste. Infrastructure spending in when over done still has long term purpose and value. Spending on space could have an enormous beyond imagining pay off.

Re: wasteful - FTFA: "The savings from divesting from the aforementioned facilities is projected at $20 million."

Wow! That's a bunch of money!

But wait, whats that other thing where a bunch of money was wasted? Ahh, Solyndra... how much?

FTFWikipedia: - "Solyndra's loan approval process began under the Bush administration. However, emails show that two weeks before Obama took office, the Energy Department panel considering the loan unanimously decided not to proceed. In March 2009, one White House b

Tell congress we're under attack from space A-rabs and we need surveillance equipment pronto. We also need drones to go up there and find out what's going on. And manned craft as well just for good measure in case the drones miss anything.

Y'know, I'd really like to see the government take an approach like that on things. Not just assume we're all going to keep paying out taxes for whatever that bunch of idiots in Congress deems fit and proper. When I look at some budgets and calculate my share, I'm not sure I really feel like paying that much for some things.

Typical. You have no clue how much something takes to do, so naturally you assume your share is tooo much.

Here is a clue: Tax dollars aren't yours. Ever. They are all ours, societies. DO you really want New York, Detroit and Dallas and California to be the effective determination for all tax money?

Figure this: WW II was funded by the sale of bonds. Bond drives went on everywhere and were widely supported by the entertainment industry to underwrite the massive expense of a massive undertaking. But today we don't buy War Bonds, it's assumed we are all going to pony up $5,000 (on average) for our share of the annual Pentagon Budget, for whatever they decide they need. Let. Me. Tell. You. $5,000 is probably what I could have afforded for war bonds, had I lived in the 1940's in 1940's adjusted dollars. But this has been on-going since after the war ended and is still eating up a high percentage of our GDP, for years on end, even when we are at complete peace.

We must be bombing a dozen foreign countries on regular basis (now with drones). We are hardly "at peace". Oh, and we are in "War on Terror" which is projected to end approximately never.
Congress needs to man up and demand that the Administration has to get damn permission and issue official war declaration in order to bomb anyone. And de-fund any and all money that goes toward "unofficial" offensive military action.

We must be bombing a dozen foreign countries on regular basis (now with drones). We are hardly "at peace". Oh, and we are in "War on Terror" which is projected to end approximately never.

Congress needs to man up and demand that the Administration has to get damn permission and issue official war declaration in order to bomb anyone. And de-fund any and all money that goes toward "unofficial" offensive military action.

Before 2001 we were at peace, with the only event since 1991 (Desert Storm) being a few cruise missles lobbed into Serbia to bring them to heel. Yet our military spending, despite cuts and closures, still ranked high while the Pentagon found all manner of toys in its version of the Sears & Roebucks Catalog that it just couldn't live without. Even when we're not at war, we're preparing for total war.

We must be bombing a dozen foreign countries on regular basis (now with drones). We are hardly "at peace". Oh, and we are in "War on Terror" which is projected to end approximately never.

Congress needs to man up and demand that the Administration has to get damn permission and issue official war declaration in order to bomb anyone. And de-fund any and all money that goes toward "unofficial" offensive military action.

Before 2001 we were at peace, with the only event since 1991 (Desert Storm) being a few cruise missles lobbed into Serbia to bring them to heel. Yet our military spending, despite cuts and closures, still ranked high while the Pentagon found all manner of toys in its version of the Sears & Roebucks Catalog that it just couldn't live without. Even when we're not at war, we're preparing for total war.

Also the cost of a bombing campaign like the one in Libya was "only" about $US1 billion for the US side of things.

Before 2001 we were at peace, with the only event since 1991 (Desert Storm) being a few cruise missles lobbed into Serbia to bring them to heel.

Seriously!?!? I agree with you that were we ever at peace we would continue to arm ourselves (we're a bit pathological that way), but to suggest we were at peace in the 1990s is one of the stupidest things I have heard in a long time (and this is a presidential campaign year!).

During the 1990s the US:
Bombed Iraq and patrolled the no-fly zone continuously,
Lead the UN occupation of Somalia for two years,
Lead a Naval Blockade of Serbia and Montenegro for 2 years,
Patrolled a no fly zone over Bosnia f

To bad the current war on two fronts are not only unfunded with bonds earmarked for the war effort, but the republican president that started them gave a huge tax break to the wealthy at the same time. This set up the US government to have a huge spike in debt which has gotten us in this mess in the first place.

Also one has to wonder how enthusiastic people would have been for the war if in the lead up to it the US government were front loading some of the tax costs. If every time it came up, the future annual tax increases for "Iraq invasion" were mentioned.

How about a nice war tax. A simple, flat, per person amount for the previous years war costs. Heck, I'd even let them space each year out over 5-10 plus interest.
Do that and I can assure you that the chicken hawks starting these wars would be a lot quieter.

Actually they wouldn't be - flat tax's are disproportionately regressive, and military-industrial complex has made out like bandits from the wars. Halliburton would get the army's of lobbyists in.

Although, you're right in the sense that the people we need to reach on these issues are not the upper 1%, but the masses of people who either don't care to vote against them or perversely keep voting for them. But I'd much rather target the people who tend to profit from the current wars in the only language they

Two fronts? You realize the US military left Iraq in December of last year. So we have A-stand and... where?

You do realize that our military were in Iraq from March 2003 to December 2011, and cost the US $845 billion. This is not including what Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates is $3 trillion for the true cost of the war which takes into account the interest paid on the debt to finance the Iraq war, health care costs for returning war veterans, and replacing/repairing the munitions used duri

You started out your comment by saying we're in "current war on two fronts". If I were being a pedant, I would have said even in, say, 2007 we were in two wars and not a war on two fronts. I could even have said we weren't in any wars but rather we're conducting two occupations.

But to answer your question, it affects the argument because it's a hell of a lot cheaper to maintain a few thousand contractors plus some trainers in Iraq than it is to conduct a war there, so you were exaggerating the cost by qu

you can leave any time you want. Of course the kinds of places that would take a self-important whiner don't realy have the sort of society that you could sponge off of, so I guess you'll just have to sit there and have your temper tantrum.

Here is a clue: Tax dollars aren't yours. Ever. They are all ours, societies.

Sure, I grant that my tax dollars are gone squandered on whatever fads we think we need. But I'll also strive to make sure as much of my pre-tax income (and everyone else's pre-tax income) doesn't fall into our incompetent, greedy hands.

The interest of the general public could help keep funding. If people never heard of it, they will not notice or care.

I think that's one thing behind getting more pretty pictures out to the public as quick as they can. But we had a speaker at our astronomy club from the Little SDO and the advances in solar observing are startling (and quite likely of considerable value) and I don't think some people are as aware of these programs as I wish they were.

Interesting? SyFy is WAY more interesting. Got it? The real Universe? Pretty irrelevant. In scale just as much as every single one of us is irrelevant to It.

The difference is, when a few Redshirts are dusted on Star Trek the nation doesn't stop what its doing. When we landed on the Moon the world watched. When we landed Curiousity on Mars a lot of people around the world still paid attention. High profile things are still able to get funding, but when an new telescope is proposed to study how the universe was made, it comes in pretty distant down the list. Some people don't care and some people don't want answers which challenge the answers they've already

Does this have anything to do with the James Webb [wikipedia.org] being over budget.

It will quite possibly. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has done a lot for NASA PR. Amazing stuff. But James Webb isn't going to be about pretty pictures, it's about seeking answers to questions, questions the HST can't answer and no ground-based scope can do, because deep space IR doesn't penetrate the atmosphere.

When the USSR threw a silvery ball into orbit the US woke up, and answered a challenge issued by JFK. Now that China is making noise about landing on the Moon, people are 'Meh, who cares?' Time

When the USSR threw a silvery ball into orbit the US woke up, and answered a challenge issued by JFK. Now that China is making noise about landing on the Moon, people are 'Meh, who cares?' Times and attitudes have certainly changed. Not much national pride in scientific accomplishment.

Remember that the Soviets at the beginning of WWII actually were aggressors that invaded Poland (and five other nations). It was obvious, then, that the Soviets weren't screwing around and were willing to use military power t

No, this has nothing to do with JWST being over budget.
The review concerns the astronomy funding through the National Science Foundation, whose budget is independent of NASA's funding.
NASA funds all of space based astronomy (including data analysis), while NSF funds ground based astronomy. NSF mainly funds the national optical astronomy observatory on Kitt Peak in Arizona and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA, with facilities in West Virginia and in New Mexico (plus some other states). In addition, NSF funds data analysis/theory grants. Overall, NSF's budget is much smaller than NASA's, but then, ground based hardware is much cheaper than space based. To put things in perspective: for about 50% of all university astronomers, NSF facilities are the only way to get optical observing time (the remainder of astronomers have access via privately funded telescopes, such as the Keck).
The closures of the instruments proposed in the report to NSF essentially mean the US giving up its current leadership in large areas of radio astronomy, and significantly reducing access to medium sized facilities for optical astronomers, if the (realistic) flat budget for the astronomy program is realized.

Furthermore, the cuts proposed are to older telescopes that cost a tiny fraction of JWST's construction budget to keep running. Every generation of new telescopes costs about 5x the previous generation, since Big Science keeps needing bigger telescopes to reach new frontiers. I work in astronomy, and as far as I can tell, the staff to keep one modern telescope (the LBT) going is similar in size to the staff required to keep several older machines operating. Heck, one of the telescopes I work on (the Kitt Pe

As Mr. Buffet likes to lecture the rest of us about 'paying our fair share of taxes' and his feeling that he does not, how about stepping up to the plate and providing the funding for these projects as you clearly don't bother cutting the government a check for the shortfall you wish they would take (and that you can in fact send to them at anytime if you were inclined).

While the above is meant to be some what tongue in cheek, the larger point is that there are lots of billionaires and multimillionares in t

I am not an astronomer but there seems to be a number of new projects that have come on line that may make some facilities obsolete. The new projects have better resolution, precision, etc. Do we need all the installations that may be cut? Can they cut other installations that are not as useful? These are questions I am putting out there as I do not know the answers.

None of the new instruments can do what the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) can do. There's a continuum of frequency, sensitivity and resolution that can be examined and each instrument can sample a small fraction of it. The GBT is the largest single fully pointable dish and covers a few hundred MHz to 100Ghz, the VLBA is the longest baseline interferometer (other instruments can be cobbled together) and covers from 1 to 100GHz. The GBT is sometimes used in conjunction wit

It's too easy to point at discrete chunks of 10's of millions that affect an isolated group than tackle the billions that affect everyone.

In an election year the math is pretty easy. Would one rather do a funding cut that may lose a few thousand votes or another that may lose a few million votes? In most people's lives a telescope is unimportant but health care is very important.

While that is totally true, we could just try a couple less wars, or raising the retirement age, or any number of sane ideas to pay for something this small.

Cut military spending, yes. Per the constitution, no military budget can exceed two years, so that should be a quick action.

Raising the retirement age, however, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. With a real unemployment rate in the vicinity of 20%, this will just lead to more people receiving unemployment benefits, a cost that is much higher per individual than medicare is.Bring down unemployment first (and start being honest about it, not removing long term unemployed from the counts), and then increase the

Because society can't afford for you to be drain on resources for the first 20 years of your life AND the last 20?

When Roosevelt created it, the age for Social Security was just a few years short of the average lifespan, which was in turn just a few years longer than one's nominal productive life - recipients drew for an average of about 5 years. Since then we've extended our lives by over 15 years on average but we haven't done 1/10 as well at extending the years of productivity and good health. If anyt

I would love to take all the Socialists, Marxists, Communists and simply put them together on the other side of the planet from myself, while the people who value individual liberties and freedoms could be free from these parasites, destroyers of life, the anti-life forms on the other side of the planet.

Actually, private companies build almost all the things that seem to be credited to government. The money comes from you and me, goes through the goverment which generally hires a private contractor that does the real work.

The reason this money takes a detour through the government (e.g., for infrastructure) is the free-rider problem. For other thing that have less of a problem with free-riders, some folks would argue that we should just leave the government out of it. Others seem to like the government t

If I am correct the opposite of free rider is user pay which has it's own issues. For example, taxes pay for the National Weather Service. Does that mean that everyone who wants to know hat the weather is should pay a fee? Does it mean that everyone who wants to get tornado warnings should pay a fee? The government provides services for the good everyone and the payment is through taxes.

I don't see it as a free rider issue at all but a concentration of funds to be dispursed to projects for the good of the p

I think the previous poster was referring to the Interstate system much of which was built by tax money.

As for telephone and electrical grids, it was government granted monopolies and gave monetary grants that required complete service to be provided. Otherwise low density areas, which are not profitable, would never get telephone or electricity. The government may not have directly paid for the grids but it influences their creation.

What what government does in relation to utilities is change the motive fr

That very wonderful to say, but relatively speaking each and every one of those are incomparable to technologies coming out of government sponsored research. It really is quite amazing how quickly people forget the ancestry of things such as the Internet, passenger jets, computers, and nuclear power.

Government is an invaluable and very necessary patron of the sciences. No sane business would invest in anything that doesn't have a near term payout let alone things such as basic physics. If private finance

Here, let me explain: Back in the 50s and 60s, America was on top of the world. We were clearly the best country that ever was or ever will be. Congress knows this because they all grew up then, and some of them killed a few Nazis, maybe. But now we're falling behind. And why do you think THAT is, huh?

We piss away hundreds of millions of dollars each year on useless trash, and then complain we can't afford Science. What a surprise right? I mean, just 2 weeks ago President Obama gave 25million dollars to the Rebels in Syria. That is just the most recent example of hundreds possible that does not include the Wars we are currently waging.

Let us face facts. The majority of people in Politics right now that care about 1 thing, and here is a clue: It sure as hell is not bettering our society. Keep defend

Agree, but building a super-expensive scientific widget and then not coming up with the $1M/yr or whatever it takes to keep it working is just dumb.

If you can't afford a car don't own a car. What you don't do is spend $50k on a luxury car and then refuse to change its oil.

If we were talking about not building new facilities I could completely understand the decision, but choosing not to run non-obsolete facilities just to save a few bucks is penny wise and pound foolish.

Wrong comparison even though - I mean let's assume that we have to be in Afghanistan. That all that money isn't not going to armoring and arming actual US military personnel.

The F-22 program cost was $US 66.7 billion over about 14 years. $4.7 billion per year. The planes cost $150 million to produce each. The entire planetary science budget could have it's funding increased for less then the price of 4 of those planes per year. But that's programs over - unfair right?